| Engineering Journal 7.3.1.2: The ipx maximum-paths Command To set the maximum number of equal-cost paths the router uses when forwarding packets, use the ipx maximum-paths in global configuration mode. The full syntax of this command is ipx maximum-paths paths To restore the default value of 1, use the no form of this command: no ipx maximum-paths paths The argument paths indicates the maximum number of equal-cost paths the router will use. The argument paths can be a value from 1 to 512. The default value is 1. The ipx maximum-paths command is designed to increase throughput by allowing the router to choose among several equal-cost, parallel paths. (Note that when paths have differing costs, the router chooses lower-cost routes before higher-cost routes.) IPX load shares on a packet-by-packet basis in round-robin fashion, regardless of whether you are using fast switching or process switching. That is, the first packet is sent along the first path, the second packet along the second path, and so on. When the final path is reached, the next packet is sent to the first path, the next to the second path, and so on. Limiting the number of equal-cost paths can save memory on routers with limited memory or very large configurations. Additionally, in networks with a large number of multiple paths and end systems with the limited ability to cache out-of-sequence packets, performance might suffer when traffic is split between many paths. In the following example, the router uses up to three parallel paths: Router(config)# ipx maximum-paths 3